The train station was a cathedral of silence.
Every footstep echoed through the concrete tunnels, bouncing off broken signs and shattered display screens. The lights overhead buzzed faintly, flickering in alternating blue and amber, casting the station in a haunted twilight. Dust danced in the air like suspended ash, disturbed only by the softest breath.
And at the far end stood Elira.
Her face was hidden behind a smooth bone-white mask, etched with fading silver veins that pulsed faintly with inner magic. Her cloak, tattered and worn, whispered against the floor as she slowly approached. She moved like a ghost, every step deliberate, weightless.
Aeris froze.
Liam gripped the fragment around his neck.
"You should not have come here," Elira said, her voice hollow beneath the mask. It was neither hostile nor kind—a tone stripped of emotion, like a blade that had long forgotten mercy.
"Why are you here?" Liam asked, stepping forward. "Are you part of the Watchers now? Are you guarding the fragments?"
A beat.
"No. I'm guarding you."
That answer twisted something in his chest.
Aeris stepped beside him, voice sharp. "Guarding? Or manipulating? You were the one who sent us down this path. What game are you playing, Elira?"
The masked woman tilted her head.
"Not a game. A sacrifice. And not mine."
She extended her hand, and with a quiet pulse of energy, the wall behind her shimmered. The illusion faded like smoke, revealing a doorway carved from obsidian, marked with the sigils they had only seen once before—on the spellbook.
Kael and Nyra burst in from the stairwell, bloodied and breathless.
"We lost them," Kael panted. "For now. What's going on here?"
"A choice," Elira said.
The doorway pulsed. Dark power oozed from its edges, humming in sync with the fragment inside Liam's chest.
Elira finally removed her mask.
Her face had changed.
No longer the gentle healer they once knew, her eyes now glowed with faint crimson rings. Faint scars laced her cheeks, and her gaze carried centuries of pain.
"I've walked this world for lifetimes," she said. "Both your realm and theirs. And I failed both. I loved a man who became a monster. I served a kingdom that burned its people. And now... now I serve a cause I don't believe in, simply because it's the only thing left."
"Nytherion," Liam said.
She nodded.
"He wasn't always this way. He was brilliant. Kind. He wanted to unify the realms to stop the war. But the magic changed him. The spellbook twisted his desires. And when I tried to stop him... he thought I betrayed him."
Aeris looked down.
Nyra stepped forward. "Then help us stop him. If you still care."
Elira turned to her.
"You don't understand. He's not the same. And he's not alone. He's found something ancient—a consciousness older than either realm. It speaks through the fragments. It's what drives the corruption."
Liam blinked. "The voice... the visions. That's not Nytherion?"
"No," Elira whispered. "It's what controls him."
Silence. A cold dread settled over the group.
Elira turned to the obsidian doorway.
"Behind this path is the fourth fragment. But it's not just a fragment—it's a prison. A piece of the original entity that wrote the spellbook. If you go in there... it will see you."
Aeris clenched her fists. "We can't stop now. We've come too far."
Elira stepped aside.
"Then may your mind survive what your heart cannot."
Into the Abyss
They entered the doorway.
The air turned dense. Reality itself seemed to stretch and recoil. Light bent unnaturally, walls breathing like lungs. They were no longer underground—they were somewhere between time and magic, a liminal space forged from pure thought.
They walked along a floating path of fractured stone. Above them hung memories—floating glass panes showing moments from their lives. Liam saw his childhood, his failures, the day he first met Aeris. Nyra saw her village, her summonings, the moment her brother vanished into a portal. Kael saw his training, his family torn apart by war.
Aeris saw fire. Always fire.
At the end of the path was a mirror.
But it reflected nothing.
"Touch it," Elira said, her voice echoing behind them.
Liam stepped forward.
As his fingers brushed the surface, the mirror shattered—
And the world collapsed.
The Prisoner of Thought
They awoke scattered.
Not in the same place.
Not even in the same dimension.
Liam opened his eyes to a sky made of eyes. A ground that pulsed like skin. And before him stood a being of impossible shape—its face shifting between everyone he ever loved, ever feared, ever failed.
"You seek the truth," it said. "But truth is not a gift. It is a weapon."
He raised the fragment.
"Then I'll wield it."
It screamed—and the real battle began.